Face in the Glass Jar
by Engineer Jess
Summary: [Written before OotP] A short piece about Snape's thoughts and fears concerning Voldemort's return, set a few days after GoF's ending. (Sorry if been done before.)


AN: This is a little piece about Snape's thoughts and fears concerning Voldemort's return, set a few days after GoF's ending. Sorry if this is done before, but it's impossible to rake through all the 70000+ fics here. Can be OOC or odd.

**Face in the Glass Jar**

It was a warm, sunny day outside Hogwarts. However, down in the stony dungeons the air was as cold and dank as always. Severus Snape sat in his office, alone, at the desk. A few days had passed since the students had scampered back to their homes to spend summer holidays. To run free, bathe in the white warm sunlight, with no real worries to push their shoulders down. Well... perhaps some of them understood, what was to come... 

"...like that nasty Potter kid", he grunted. Even mentioning that teen made the Potions teacher's neck muscles involuntarily twitch. His biased mind kept blaming the scar-marked boy about everything, about the return of You-Know-Who, about everything that had hit Hogwarts and the plains of this world lately. The resurrected hazards had not gained even near dominance, but what after all hindered them from getting it? The rather weak-feeling resistance of Dumbledore and his few allies? 

And had not that Potter been the major part in the foe's reawakening? All his fault, all his fault... The tart accusations concerning Harry muffled under them the little reason that desperately chirped in Snape's head. 

_It is not the boy's fault; it is not the boy's fault..._

"SHUT UP!" he bellowed out loud, hitting the table with a clenched fist. "What do you know? What do I know?" Severus found himself burying his head into his hands. "What does anyone know?" The man heaved a long, half-broken inhale, and raised his regard. Some oily, sticky locks were glued onto his forehead. With a careless sweep, they were brushed away back to lounge with the rest of the greasy hairs. 

The last few times had just been too much for him, who had thought that he mastered his mind. But that the evil's return affected this way... Obviously he could not control yet his emotional life. He had once carried Voldemort's sign as a loyal servant... now being a traitor, a reformed man. But how did the putrid trinity of cold fear, oppression, and stress seem crushing his senses at the moment? Or was it just his imagination creating the hell inside the head, although there was light outside, that the hopes had not yet been perished...? 

Still... it felt rather desperate. The Dark Lord had gathered strength already before this day, however not _in this fashion_. Voldemort had been just a shadow of himself, but this time... it was _real_. More actual than just actual, although most of those lousy ministers in their high chairs would not admit it. Those idiots exposed the world for dangers beyond understanding, with their childish attitudes...

In a glimpse of future, his mind had created a murky vision of something that had no description. If the darkness would rise and gather those amounts of vile power that the dream had narrated... no, that had to be just a bad nightmare. No, Severus wanted to shut his eyes from that. Turn his head away from that indescribable omen of terror.

"Go away!" he snarled at the images flying across his visual field. "Go away! You are not real!"

Like a swarm of scared flies, the howling mixture of dreadful sights burst and scattered. The Potions teacher heaved another sigh, drew straight his bent back and found a better pose in his chair. He needed to calm down. Needed to get a grip of himself just like he had managed to do uncountable times before. Those illusions were something that needed to be torn to shreds. If those were cultivated and let accumulate, they would drain his courage.

And courage with determination was something obligatory in the remote future. How perilous it ever would form... he would need to fight. If once the darkness was left, there was no nook reserved for that any longer in his heart.

Although most of the outsiders would scowl and laugh that Severus Snape had no heart. Only something resembling a slimy snake replacing it.

With a cold sneer, he smiled derisively at his own conception. Potter would say just something like that. And his mischievous pack of teen allies.

His long fingers gripped the teacup that had waited on the desk already a while. Funny, how he could not clearly even remember bringing it here. And when... His wandering, his whole being had been in the middle of such a blur lately. The days had just slithered past, him roaming in the Hogwarts castle corridors with those chaotic misgivings. And now there were not even those irritating children distracting his steps.

Those lousy brats, what did they understand? They had no _real_ experience of life, had they? Or had they...? Answerless questions, again. But how he envied their freedom at the moment. Someone else would carry the worries in the background. They could still live in the lands of sugar and honey, couldn't they?

"It's people like me who work silently behind the coulisses so that they could keep their fake convenience... Hmph." His smirk was sardonic.

The tea tasted like dishwater. Must have stood on the table for too long. He slowly lowered the cup down, trying in vain to find any taste from that lukewarm rotgut. His hand set the dish in front of a huge glass jar squatting on the table with other miscellaneous items. In the jar, inside a yellowish slime, plashed something livid, shapeless... similarly to those on the shelves, surrounding the chamber with decayed disgust from every side. Snape remained to stare at the obscure reflection of the glass surface. His face was there, colored with that pallid yellowish shade...

He shuddered, looking at the slightly twisted image on the jar's side. Was that scull-like face supposed to be _his_? Mainly it appeared something that You-Know-Who might possess. Did he look so ugly? Was that oily rim of black mass his hair?

Funny, how he had not assigned a thought for a thing like that before... he was not even all that old. And still... his reflection was just like one of those bleak phantasms that tortured his brains at the moment.

Perhaps he needed some sunlight. Odd, how the 'cozy' office felt abruptly so repellent. Perhaps it would only breed more of those mindly ghosts. And prejudices.

Speaking of prejudices... it gave Severus a nasty taste on the palate when he recalled what Dumbledore had demanded. Cooperation. That he should forget the old dislikes towards certain persons so that those fighting against the Dark Side could keep their heads together, whatever would come. Cooperation... he had been made to shake hands with his near foe, Sirius Black. Cooperation... was that supposed to mean also _cooperation_ with that nauseous brat Potter? He grimaced. He would need to fight side by side with the one that his mind kept as the scapegoat? He would really need to stand _that_?

"Dumbledore will require it sooner or later..."

The addle reflection in the glass jar had not changed although several minutes had passed. It scowled back as abhorrently as ever, resembling more and more something coming from the graves of the Death Eaters.

Severus rose up. Yes, he _needed _sunlight. Some healthy breeze. This musty cabin made him sick. Weird... how he wanted to talk to someone, clear his head from the fears.

Fears would not help with the task Dumbledore had set in front of him.

Perhaps there would be someone on the yard to whom he could say a word or two... or just walk alone. Whatever. Anything but this ill room.

A gush of black robes touched the air, and the Potions Master was gone. 

The glass jar did not frown any longer.


End file.
